The Year with the Bombs
by vifetoile89
Summary: District 12's first Victor tells about his Hunger Games, the Tenth - casually called, "The one with all the bombs."


**The Year With the Bombs**

By Vifetoile

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games, nor do I pretend to, that's all Suzanne Collins' realm.

This story was actually inspired by a dream that I had. Thanks to my friends who encouraged me to write it out into a full story! Enjoy this grim little tale for your New Year's Celebration.

ooooo

So you want to hear about my Hunger Games. Well. Sit down.

The commentators on TV call my game "The one with the bombs." It was the Tenth Annual Hunger Games, and people attached a kind of specialness to it. If humans counted by twelves, or by thirteens, no one would have cared. But we count by tens, so the Tenth Annual Hunger Games had to be _better_.

In District Twelve, the girl's name was called first, but I don't remember who she was. Clara Green volunteered to take her place. I think that the first girl was kind of simple, not right in the head. Clara Green was older, levelheaded, popular. And then I was Reaped from the boys: scrawny and small, nobody's fool.

You've been complaining that the train ride to the Capitol is long? You just wait. Our Hunger Games got _delayed_. It's only happened like three times in forty-nine Games so far, and this was the first time. First the head Gamemaker had a baby. Then, once someone had the bright idea to replace her, oh no! Her replacement is embezzling funds from the Games to cover their debts! And delay after delay, week after week. We spent almost four weeks in training and ended up having two interview sessions, that's how bad it was.

Now don't look at me like that, Abernathy. You think that three weeks in training would be great. And Clara and I certainly got to learn a lot, and sit back and laugh at the alliances, making and breaking like crazy all over the place – this was before the alliance of Districts One, Two, and Four was an assumed fact, like it is now.

But that was also twenty-four kids, locked up for three weeks in one building, surrounded by their own murderers on every side. Only one even had a photograph of his family to look at. I saw one girl at the camouflage station painting a picture of – I guess it was her house, I don't know.

It was delayed so damn long. Nowadays, I really, _really_ don't think that was accidental.

So, anyway, the Games started. Clara and I had been allies since the moment we stepped into the Capitol. The Cornucopia that year was weirdly spaced out, but what was weirdest was that in front of each Tribute, there was a backpack with the district number on it. Easy grabbing distance. Obviously something the Gamemakers wanted us to have.

Be afraid of whatever the Gamemakers obviously _want_ for you. Not that you really have a choice.

Clara and I took our backpacks, I grabbed another pack from the Cornucopia, and we ran and ran… finally we rested and opened them. Whaddya know, waiting inside each was a loaf of District 12 bread, good quality, a blanket, and a phone. Not attached to a wire kind of phone, but just a little handheld phone. Your stylists, they'll carry phones like that, you'll see. They're everywhere in the Capitol. And now Clara and I had them.

We joked that we'd call each other, maybe use them as walkie-talkies for cunning little strategies, but we couldn't figure out how to call each other. So we stowed them away – we'd been given holsters to hold them in, strap 'em to our waists – and hunted for dinner.

An hour or so after sunset, Clara's phone rings. Its little screen just says "Home." She answers it really tentatively, and I'm watching her – even though I'm supposed to be on guard. She started to laugh, then to cry. I heard a bit of singing coming through on her end – "_Happy birthday to you_," of all things. Yeah. She'd mentioned it was her birthday. Listening to her half of it, I put together that it was a lot of her family and friends all come together to wish her the best of luck, and a happy birthday, and give her strength. She was hanging onto that phone like it was her lifeline by the time she hung up.

A minute after she hangs up, still wiping away her tears, my phone rings. I answered it, and it was my dad. He's drunk. If you kids wonder why _I'm _an alcoholic, just look at my father. But he's still… trying. He wishes me best of luck, says he's proud of me, says he'd help me out but the people told him not to. I'm just burning with embarrassment that the entire nation gets to hear my dad's slurred, drunken rant in my direction over the phone.

The next day Clara received a corporate sponsor's gift – a beautiful garrote, a gift to the girl who was so sweet on the phone with her family. I got nothing.

The day after that we came across the first mines. It's a stray rabbit crossing our path – we were eying it for lunch – it hit the mine, blown to smithereens. Clara and I realized we're standing in a minefield.

We sit down, right where we are, not moving another step, to start planning. My mother, before she died, worked with explosives and dynamite in the coalmines. I have a few ways to figure out the bombs, wonder if maybe I can't rewire them. Clara comes up with ideas, but within the next two days she's dead.

The District Six tributes, allied with the survivor of District Seven, ambushed us the next day and chased us into an area crowded with minefields. Clara stepped on one. I put the death away for a few minutes – which you will _have to do_, you hear me? And focused on the District Six boy. He had three knives on him, glittering things just tied onto his belt. I snatched them away, and he was so mad at me, chasing after me, he didn't bother to check where he stepped. Kablooie.

So I ran, realizing that the entire arena was studded with pockets of mines, bombs. Kids were dying faster than in any game before.

I spent the night in a nightmare, remembering Clara blowing up, again and again. The bombs were everywhere. My three little knives were cold in my hands. I wished, more than breath, more than food, more than to survive, I wished that I could hold my phone to my ear and hear my mother's voice, telling me it would be okay, that she'd take care of the dynamite, that it would all be all right.

After sunrise, I was too weak to try and get breakfast. I put the phone against my ear, just so that I can pretend (to myself and the rest of Panem) that I had someone there.

That's when I heard it.

Just from inside the phone, a faint _tick… tick… tick…_

Somewhere I got a whole lot of energy. I threw the phone down and I _ran_. I ran and I did not stop running. Later it turned out I ran straight through an entire woods with mines hidden in the grass and somehow missed all but a tiny firecracker, that shocked me and set my leg on fire, but didn't do more than that. I got the focus to hunt and keep on surviving, keep on, keep on, hearing that ticking noise everywhere I went.

But I survived. I remembered everything I'd heard about explosives, and I survived the big cherry bombs, the harmless firecrackers, the fires, the one monster blast that rocked the arena end to end. I only saw the cloud from that one, and counted the cannons. I thanked my stars that I was nowhere near it.

But I swear to god that phone followed me. That phone floated by in the stream where I bent to take a drink, it was waiting for me on rocks when I climbed hills, it was in arm's reach when I woke up in the morning.

I just had to evade it. I couldn't try to destroy it. The last surviving Tribute from District Three, as I found out later, tried to dismantle his. The poor sonuvabitch… Anyway.

After there were only eight tributes left, the phones could be called at any times. I watched the recap and there were kids who had their families on speakerphone, every minute. The District Nine girl was one of those. She had been one to watch, from the start of training. In the end, the last fight of it came down to me and her.

She'd gotten badly hurt somewhere along the line. Her eyes especially had been hit. Still, she was good. And I was damned exhausted, and my leg still not totally healed from that explosion.

But I was going to win all the time. I knew it.

I mentioned that I'd been given a holster for my phone. I hid the knife I'd taken from the District Six boy there. That was my little trick, the third knife that I had on me. District Nine girl – I think her name was Lizzie – took my stabs and swipes without even crying out, and twisted the first knife out of my hand. She knocked the second one out with a good stab from her short sword – that hand was useless.

I scrabbled away, backwards, over the ground, and I started to take out my third knife, left-handed. Her eyes started to bother her, she was wiping at them, her short sword still pointed at me. She wore her little phone on her side, facing me.

I heard screams coming from the phone.

All I could make out was "_He's got_–"

I was up and _running_, and the blast threw me off of my feet and burned me, and I was on fire and screaming and rolling on the ground, and my ears were ringing when it was over, and Lizzie was – Lizzie was a red smear on the ground, I could feel blood on my face and bones in my hair, but the hovercraft was taking me away, and I was a victor, and the arena was… over.

What are you looking at me like that for?

Shit, kids, what else can I tell you? My Games didn't come down to strength, or to brains, or to good sponsors. My Games came down to the kids who had the good sense to realize that the Capitol would even use love as a weapon.

I was awake for months and months, hearing that scream. The family and friends of that poor girl were screaming "_He's got a knife_" because they wanted to see her come home. The Capitol had told them, no helping your arena tribute, in any way. They tried to help her and she got blown up.

But make no mistake, I would have won anyway. You hear me? I would have won anyway.

It's been forty years since the last Victor of District 12, but by god, there's four of you this year and I expect _one_ of you will survive. Maysilee Donner, Juliet Werth, Sindeny Turner, and Haymitch Abernathy. One of you _has_ to. For the love of all that's good… it's been thirty-nine years. One of you has to come home sooner or later. I don't have that much time left…

What was I saying? Nothing. Nothing important. Now go on to bed, all of you. That means you, Abernathy.

… Funny thing…

… whenever the Games start up again, I swear I can hear ticking.


End file.
